Feeding Africa’s fast-growing cities

“Demographic projections have forecast that in the coming decades, Africa’s rate of urbanisation will be the highest in the world. According to some models, the majority of the continent’s population will be urbanised by the mid-2030s at the latest. As a result, Africa’s cities and food markets offer the largest and fastest-growing market opportunity available to the continent’s 60 million farms.

Parallel increases in per capita income, fuelled by an emerging middle class, are triggering dietary changes. By 2010, the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimated that the continent’s middle class accounted for over one-third of its total population. Growing per capita income leads to pronounced dietary changes, including diversification from starchy staples to higher-value perishable products such as dairy, meat and horticulture, as well as growing demand for prepared and